If $375 + tax + p&p will get me something I can plug into my A1200 and have a full OS4 capable system, then I think the hardware crisis is over.

It's just a pity that although the Powervixxen was announced *first*, it is probably the last hardware that will get released, since the order is "CPUs > PV TL > PV LT > PV LT Carrier board" as Adam told us.At $375 it makes most sense of the three (although the impossibility to deactivate it is a major showstopper) and will possibly generate the highest sales. An overpriced CPU module or "high-end" board at $1200 won't drastically widen the userbase, only cheap entry-level hardware will do.

I find this interesting…It will be hopefully fun to see what I have worked on Tuesday…I think ACK has more to show then Troika…I hope the CPU transferee rate issues are located on the CPU module not on the motherboard…

One question is OpenBIOS and OpenFirmware the same?

I think Uboot is nice, and I understand the need to support different BIOS types (OpenBIOS/OpenFrimware) to obtain a bigger market.

Personally I think the work Troika showed in my option more and more that they are not professional, it seams that they have not designed there own hardware or it’s left on planning stage too long… even I can design a web page, make some Dpaint paintings, select a few chips, and make big announcements, start completion for case designs, I’m hopeful that ACK do not go down the same route, I hope ACK is producing some thing, and do not waste time on vapor in belief that some thing is going to produce it self, And I think the Troika design is too complicated if they where to design it from ground up.

OS4pre4 was 36MB and the final version will probably be bigger. There's just no way anyone would even consider putting it on floppies. Even OS3.5 and 3.9 requires a CD-drive. You don't need tower to fit a CD-drive, but a 4-way IDE splitter might be usefull.

I know that most of us who are left are pretty comfortable taking our amigas apart, but having to hack together an external IDE CDROM (complete with a bare ATX power supply with a paper clip to simulate the power button) in order to install the OS isn't my idea of how to best grow the market. Too bad no-one's thought of a clean way to have an external CD-ROM drive for A1200s (wasn't there some sort of snap-on CD-ROM for the A500?)

I wonder how expensive it would be to put the OS4 install CD into a read-only PCMCIA card... that would solve that problem, if it doesn't significantly raise the price.

Well, there was a CD-ROM you could connect directly to the PCMCIA-port of the A1200, but it was rather expensive. Then there was the Squirrel SCSI-controller for the PCMCIA-port which can be used to connect an external SCSI CD-ROM. Then we have all the accelerators with SCSI...

Maybe OS4 could be copied to some memory card and then a PCMCIA memorycard reader could be used to install OS4.